Tuesday 22 February 2011 03.00 EST
First published on Tuesday 22 February 2011 03.00 EST

It was a debate that may find echoes around England if the government's "free schools" policy takes off. Union members, gathered for a meeting of their local association, were asked to consider the implications of a document which, if the ideas it seemed to outline were to be realised, would dramatically change the face of state education in their area.

Under discussion at the meeting last week was a list of plans by a variety of organisations to set up free schools – semi-independent organisations said by ministers to be founded in response to parental demand – within the traditional boundaries of the local authority.

What sets this paper apart is the number of free school proposals it documents as potentially on the cards for this one area of London alone: 10.

Not only that, but a high proportion of the proposed schools – seven – are said to come from either Christian or Muslim religious groups. This raised the prospect, said speakers at the meeting, of a fragmentation of education within the borough according to the faiths of the children.

The borough is Waltham Forest, and the document suggests a large number of new schools being set up in one area in a short space of time, raising serious questions about the impact on existing provision.

Information on free schools applications is notoriously sketchy, as discussed in Education Guardian last week, and the union says its detailed information on the 10 plans for free schools in Waltham Forest was based on a leak from a well-informed local authority source.

It has only been possible to confirm that five groups on the list have proposals for free or new schools in the borough. However, this still represents a potentially large impact on provision.

The NUT's information includes data on three organisations that clearly have plans for new schools in Waltham Forest, according to their websites.

The Emmanuel Christian Centre, a church whose website features the strap–line "Loving God passionately", says on its home page "I think it would be a good idea to have a Christian school in Walthamstow". The website asks people to register for further information. Its school, says the site, "will have smaller class sizes and its focus will be on high academic achievement and good discipline".

The union says the proposal is for the school to open for nursery to 16-year-old pupils and that its business case has been approved by the Department for Education (DfE), although it is not on the government's published approved list.

The Noor Ul Islam Trust is a charity, linked to a mosque, which runs a well-regarded private school in the borough and other services. It has set up a petition under the heading "A new Islamic free school in Waltham Forest" which as of last week had 498 signatures. The trust says another 1,000 people have also signed the petition on paper.

The petition says: "The aim of the school is to offer an inclusive Islamic environment where children are encouraged to have high aspirations for academic achievement." The free school, which would eventually cater for up to 650 primary pupils, will open this September if the DfE gives approval.

East London Free School already has a website and plans to establish a 200-capacity primary school by September next year. A group of 15 teachers and parents, led by the education consultant and former maths teacher Hakan Gokce, is behind it.

Forest Light Education Plus, a company run on Christian principles that runs Saturday supplementary classes for four- to-18-year-olds in the borough, told Education Guardian that it recently submitted plans to the Department for Education for a small (one-form entry) all-age school with a Christian ethos. Its director, Jennifer Edwards-Ali, a teacher of English as an additional language, says the plans are being redrafted following suggestions from the DfE and would be resubmitted, with the intention of a school opening in September 2012.

She says: "Our goal is to give our all for children: to get them out of gangs and to pull them away from taking drugs."

Tariq Hussain, a committee member of the Waltham Forest Islamic Association, said the association was applying for planning permission to set up a new school, initially for five- to 11-year-olds.

The NUT document has information on five other possible free schools in the borough: two further schools for Muslim children, comprised of one secondary and one for girls aged five to 19; a school linked to a Roman Catholic charity called Marrian Mission; a school proposed by a group of science teachers; and one put forward by a group of local parents.

Marian Mission told Education Guardian that, although it had once had plans to set up a free school and had discussed these with Waltham Forest council officials, it now proposed to establish a more conventional voluntary aided special school for children with behavioural difficulties.

The NUT document says an Islamic-ethos school could be set up by a school called Lantern of Knowledge, a small independent institution in Leyton. But a spokesman says: "We have currently no intention or plan to set up a free school."

The Guardian has been unable to reach the other three groups linked with the other proposed schools on the list.

The free schools document was discussed last Tuesday at the NUT's Waltham Forest association. The meeting unanimously passed a motion opposing them. Rinaldo Frezzato, the association's secretary, said that 10 new schools in the borough would have a potentially "devastating" impact on existing provision.

Although there was a shortage of places in parts of Waltham Forest, such a large number would more than cater for this shortfall. So some of the new schools could in time replace traditional local authority institutions, which might face a struggle to retain pupils and therefore come under pressure to close.

Several of the schools listed in the NUT document could pose a threat to established provision by offering a more explicitly religious ethos, meaning that pupils of different religions could move towards separate schooling, said Frezzato.

"If these plans go through, there's going to be disruption to the cultural and social cohesion in this borough, with a consequent undermining of comprehensive education and the principles that our union has stood for for many years."

Pippa Dowswell, a teacher who spoke at the meeting, said the union respected the positions of religious groups. However, the notion of children of different faiths being educated separately was worrying.

"I think multiculturalism works very well here, in the sense of pupils being educated together," she said. "We need to emphasise to the Muslim community and others that it is good to have children of different faiths in the same school, and not to go down the route of sections of the community being taught away from others."

There is no guarantee that any of the groups will get permission to open schools in Waltham Forest, as the decision rests with the education secretary, Michael Gove. It is difficult even to identify which of them have submitted formal applications, since the names of any free school applications are not revealed until Gove has approved their business cases.

No institution in Waltham Forest is listed among plans for 40 free schools published by the DfE, although they could be among 218 free school applications received but not named.

The proportion of proposals listed by the NUT as having a faith-based element in Waltham Forest is higher than that among the national list of approved applications, among which 10 of the 40 seem to have a religious ethos. Critics have suggested that the faith-based element to some free schools bids sits uncomfortably with David Cameron's suggestion this month that multiculturalism had encouraged the development of "segregated communities". Official support for faith-based schools also grew under Labour, however, with more than 100 applications for religious organisations to run community schools approved after 1997.

Alan Smithers, director of Buckingham University's centre for education and employment studies, says the free schools policy suffers from the fact that no one, other than Gove, was being given a meaningful say on whether a particular proposal was good for an area as a whole.

"Enabling people to set up their own schools is a way of releasing a lot of energy into education," he says. "But the question the government has not answered is how are schools to form an education system that serves all children? If we want a national society which is strengthened by education, you do have to worry about the fragmentation that is taking place."

Aslam Hansa, office manager at the Noor Ul Islam Trust, which has been operating in the borough since 1990, says its school would be open to all and that it has spent many years supporting and promoting community cohesion in Waltham Forest. It runs after-school classes, youth clubs and a club for the over-50s, all of which are open to the whole community.

"Our projects have shown the locality that we can enhance and increase community cohesion," he says.

A DfE spokesman said formal applications for three free schools in Waltham Forest had been received. He would not, however, say what the projects were. He added that groups whose proposals were unsuccessful after initial application would never be named. "These groups will not receive public money and so there is no reason to publish them. This could cause unnecessary embarrassment."

He added: "The secretary of state will take into account all matters relevant, including the impact on other schools.

Local authorities would be consulted, he said. "It is important that any new state-funded academy provision meets not only faith need, but also the needs of children in the broader community, so only 50% of a free school's admissions can be made with reference to faith when a school is oversubscribed.

"We have also been absolutely clear that all free school proposals must be for inclusive schools and extremist views of any kind won't be permitted."